Satisfactory strategic asset management planning

All asset managers, regardless of industry, experience essentially the same challenges and the same frustrations when it comes time to define their strategic asset management plan. The pitfalls of the exercise are frequent and significant.

One of the main difficulties in producing a strategic asset management plan is to retrieve all the data available to know the status of the assets, the actions taken, the budgets spent, the residual life of assets and others.

To do this, it is necessary to find and read all the voluminous PDF inspection reports, to retrieve asset data from various software programs, to check the CMMS work orders and the work that was completed during the year. This data is found in several places that are more or less accessible and certainly lacks consistency. Not all critical information is digitized; it is sometimes in the minds of experts, equipment operators, or maintenance personnel. It is therefore necessary to launch an interview survey.

Even though asset managers get a lot of the reports and known information, the analysis work isn't any easier. Interspersing recovered data is a tedious ordeal. The methods used to produce inspection reports vary and the data collected is sometimes incomparable from one year to the next. It is not certain that the cumulative data is the correct one. Especially since these reports offer an observation of a situation without any advice allowing the end of life of assets to be properly planned.

This process can take several weeks. It is a routine and worthless activity that consumes asset managers more than 200 hours per year without adding any value to the plan. Most of the time is dedicated to classifying, centralizing, centralizing, digitizing and structuring documents rather than finding profitable and sustainable solutions for the organization. Strategic asset management planning is demanding, complex, and time-consuming. The most surprising thing is that the exercise comes back to the same period every year and the feeling when handing over is often the same: dissatisfaction with the work submitted due to lack of time, frustration due to a lack of justification for decisions and demotivation knowing full well that the plan will not last the year.

Ultimately, the difference between good and bad strategic planning is adherence to the plan at the end of the year. Too often, businesses prepare a capitalizable project plan that does not last 12 months due to emergencies that eat up the entire budget. Do we need to remember that an emergency costs between 6 and 10 times more expensive than planned work?

The objective of sound asset management is to intervene appropriately on an asset before it creates an unexpected production stoppage. Emergency management cannot be considered asset management.

Prioritization according to risk 

Over the course of a year, the attention and energy of maintenance teams are mainly focused on production equipment. This is quite normal, these assets are critical to the implementation of the process, they generate revenue and require more frequent maintenance. However, knowing the state of infrastructures or assets auxiliary to production, as some people call them, is as important as knowing the condition of production equipment. Without buildings, roads, electrical installations, tanks, tanks, pressure vessels, pipes, chimneys, concentrators, etc., production is impossible. Events such as leaks from silos that contaminate water and soil, broken water pipes, collapsed roofs, and conveyor belts that catch fire occur quite frequently. Breakdowns are certainly less frequent on infrastructures, but when there is a break, the downtime is generally much longer and more expensive.

It is important to have visibility over the entire asset base, in order to prioritize interventions according to the real risks for the organization.

Not knowing the health of your assets 

Emergencies are certainly very problematic for organizations. They are very expensive. Here is an example where we have modified some aspects so that people cannot recognize each other. Unfortunately, this story is not an isolated one.

Like all organizations every year, asset managers and plant engineering managers show up at the head office in New York. This is an opportunity to present the projects for three years and the budgetary priorities for the next year. Everything is going well.

Upon his return, the director of one of the factories receives the bad news that the site's most critical reservoir is leaking. Following analyses by an external specialized firm, the finding is fatal, the tank is at the end of its life. It needs to be replaced.

This tank was not in the cards for the CAPEX projects of the year. He was also not in the medium-term projects. An emergency that slowed production and cost more than $6 million in unexpected money. The questions from top leaders were harsh and unpleasant. Especially since the expert report indicated that the breakage was avoidable. Accountable managers and asset integrity managers have had a hard time. These are career-defining events.

It was all in the various reports that were over 400 pages long. Officials could have seen it coming. The last inspection was almost 5 years ago. At that time, the asset was not a major risk. The inspection firm had classified it as compliant. Since the persons responsible have changed since this inspection, the information on the defects observed and the analysis data were transmitted incorrectly due to a poor tracking system. New integrity professionals would have had to read all the past reports and assess the asset deterioration curve to prevent what was going to happen. This study time is impossible to take in the reality of the metallurgical industry.

This is a great example of the lack of centralization and risk-based structuring of asset data.

Using Stelar to improve strategic planning 

The process of developing a strategic asset management plan shouldn't be as difficult with the right methods and tools. We asked some of our customers how they use Stelar to facilitate their strategic planning now that they have the tool.

Here are the main points of interest that we collected:

The tool allows me to standardize internal and external inspections. Too often, inspection reports differ from one person or firm to another. Sometimes it was impossible to compare the data. It was so frustrating!

• Every day, there are new observations on different elements. Relevant information is accumulated via the forms in the mobile application every day to inform my next planning.
• I ask engineering firms to build structured intervention plans in Stelar so that inspection subcontractors can collect comparable data according to our work methodology.
• I can now see the health of the assets according to our risk matrix and see the full severity of all the faults identified in detail.
• I find all the information and all the documents centralized by asset.
• Since the interventions recommended by our team and external firms are all grouped by project in the platform, I am now able to calculate their cost.
• I can follow the progress of inspections and repairs on a daily basis.
• The tool allows me to see all of the company's risks at a glance and to deepen my analysis to the individual asset components.
• I can easily assess where my assets are in their life cycle.
• I evaluate my alerts in order to predict if I could potentially have unpleasant surprises in the coming months or years.
• I save time, I can focus on finding solutions. I am much more motivated by this part of my job.
• It is much easier for me to justify my requests to managers because of the dashboard that easily presents the indicators.
• I would have saved a lot of time and put a lot more quality into my strategic planning with this tool.

Is it something that speaks to you?